/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10671525
Jak 1 and 2 are so different in terms of what they offer, that I could easily see some people liking 2 more over 1, even though I find 1 to be the much more polished game.
>kept hearing its the worst in the series
A lot of fans of the first game didn't like having to drive and navigate through the city for a good chunk of the game, when they just wanted more platforming.
>wasn't that hard
You're right that the game's difficulty in absolute terms is nothing crazy, plenty of harder games out there. I think more than anything people people didn't expect such a change in difficulty when compared to the first game. In Jak 1 there was typically just one simple route to any one objective and the game did not punish you harshly if you messed it up, so Jak 2's lurch in difficulty caught many off guard. Most of those complaints are due to people not thinking enough about how to better approach certain missions, but just repeating poor strategies over and over again. I do still think the checkpoint system is flawed, but for me at least, the issues weren't that widespread across the whole game. The worst checkpointing I remember was for those atrocious mech missions. It's not gamebreaking, but it definitely detracts from the game at times.

>>10533969
I hate to say it, but at least it got way more traction than the jak II thread I made a few days ago. in hindsight, I should've just went with the generic cover image like OP and just posted this grainy webm inside the thread. lesson learned.

Safe to say it's genuinely one of the most polarizing games that's posted here. For the people that hated it, what was the one thing that put you over the edge? Most common reasons I've seen:
>Bad checkpoint placement
>Frustrating driving and city navigation
>City is ugly and pointlessly large
>Too great of a shift in tone and difficulty from Jak 1
I think these are valid reasons to have an issue with this game to the point of dropping it. My overall feelings about the game were firmly mixed on the first playthrough: it swung back and forth from exceptionally aggravating to exhilarating. But my opinion gradually became more positive on subsequent playthroughs. The game had remarkably better flow given that I was comfortable with the driving from the start and could now anticipate and prepare a better approach for its nastier missions.

I like going back it occasionally, even though it disappointed me at first. For the people who liked it, what were your highest and lowest points during the entirety of the game?